Developing ecosystem accounts for the marine and coastal environment: Limitations, opportunities and lessons learned from the United Kingdom experience.

Abstract

The marine and coastal environment provides crucial ecosystem services to sustain human activities and wellbeing. Advancing measurement frameworks to record the contribution of marine and coastal ecosystems to national wealth and economies and assess the sustainability of their use is therefore paramount. The recently proposed Ocean Accounting Framework outlined within the System of Environmental Economic Accounting represents a decisive step in this direction and provides a foundation for developing an integrated and standardised set of ecosystem accounts to support decision making and use of the seas. However, the ecological and socio-economic complexities of marine and coastal systems pose several challenges in compiling ecosystem accounts. This paper aims to discuss lessons learned, limitations and opportunities based on experience of developing an initial set of marine and coastal accounts for the United Kingdom. The paper reviews and addresses the challenges encountered and offers potential solutions for improving the measurement of marine and coastal ecosystems within accounting frameworks.